The present invention relates to a surface protecting material. The surface protecting material is suitable for decoration and repair of room interiors, furniture, kitchen articles, signboards, bulletin boards, bridges, swimming pools, and inner and outer surfaces of water storage tanks. It is also suitable for decoration and repair of roofs and inner and outer surfaces of plants, houses, automobiles, refrigerator cars, ships and boats, and surfaces of multi-story buildings, sashes, smoke stacks and towers. Additionally, it is suitable for decoration and repair of sliding surfaces such as surfaces of skis, sleds, and slides; surfaces which are liable to gather dirt and require cleaning for removal of adhering matter, and other surfaces which are required to maintain a sliding property. Finally, it is suitable for protection of eaves and roofs against damage from heavy or fallen snow.
Previously, processed papers and plastic sheets have been used for the decoration of room interiors, furniture, and other similar articles. Because of their poor resistance to water and weather conditions, however, they have proved unsuitable for use on kitchen articles, bathroom interiors, cooking tables, as well as roofs of houses and automobiles which by their nature are exposed to moisture. Colored resin-coated iron sheets, for example, have been available in the market as roofing materials. Such roofing materials, however, are disadvantageous in that they are neither readily used by laymen nor easily conformable to varying contours and they inevitably require the use of special skill.
Metallic roofs such as roofs of galvanized iron sheets often have their surfaces painted for protection from the elements. In the course of prolonged exposure, however, the coatings peel, gather rust, and lose surface smoothness. Such adverse developments have been previously overcome by the application of paint. This process, however, requires repeated application of paint. Moreover, when the metallic roofs become so deteriorated that holes develop and rainwater leaks through the roof they cannot be repaired by laymen. This problem has previously not been solved.
In the case of swimming pools, tanks for storing hot or cold water, air-conditioners for use in buildings, tanks for waste water disposal, and pipes which collect fur or slime and algae on their wall surfaces, and ships which attract marine algae and shells on their external surfaces, a method has been adopted involving coating such wall surfaces with rustproofing paints, algicides and anti-shell agents. The paints and other agents applied to surfaces according to this method, however, present a problem in that they are poisonous. Also, in the case of swimming pools, since chlorine-based reagents are used for sterilization purposes, a problem arises in that ordinary materials yield to the action of such reagents.
In the case of refrigerator cars and cold storage containers their inner wall surface gather moisture from the ambient air so that they must be periodically cleaned to remove sheets of ice. An additional problem arises in that such moisture adhered to the contacting portions of doors of the refrigerator cars and cold storage containers is frozen, thereby preventing the doors from opening smoothly. To counteract ice formation, antifrost agents have been used, but this method, however, has not been very effective.
In locations experiencing heavy snowfall, inhabitants are burdened with the task of removing snow from the roofs of their houses several times during the winter. This work demands much time and labor.